THE HUMAN PLANT 357 



determine leadership. Such are the natural and 

 necessary standards so long as man is at war 

 with wild beasts and with other savage men that 

 know no law except that of physical supremacy. 



But under conditions of civilization all that 

 has been changed. The standards of excellence 

 that determine the position of men and women in 

 any given community are mental and moral 

 rather than merely physical. 



They are in the .broad sense of the word 

 unnatural standards, but they are the only stand- 

 ards compatible with the persistence of the 

 unnatural state of society that we term civilized. 



So it has come about that the condition of men 

 in civilized society is closely comparable to the 

 condition of plants on a farm or in a carefully 

 cultivated garden. The very conditions of civili- 

 zation make it as essential that the human weed 

 should be removed and the unfit members of the 

 community prevented from propagating their 

 kind as that similar principles should apply in 

 the hothouse, the flower garden, or the farm. 



Under the conditions of barbaric life, and even 

 under those of the high civilization of classical 

 antiquity, the principles of eugenic selection thus 

 implied were carried out with a good deal of 

 rigor. Even if the weaklings were not con- 

 sciously removed — and this was sometimes done 



